Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Bowhunting Helical Fletching

Haha the FOB....... I bet an engineer or a pilot invented the Buttout!

Things are great here in MT, getting ready to bear hunt. Might do a little Turkey hunting but Turkeys have never really held my interest much. Hows the FSR life? I know you are living the Dream. You ever want to hunt here I got room for you. Happy Easter.

Trumper is correct vanes are more or less drag, that accounts for left, right, spiral or straight helical. The naive would serve themselves best to open their minds prior to typing. The shaft that flexes after release will indeed become stable with a string tied to the rear of the shaft. It just takes longer to do so.

So this wonderful string............how and where is it attached to the arrow?

Feathers/vanes allow for clean arrow attachment, draw and release.

Believe it or not, but a properly tuned arrow to the bow needs little to NO fletching with field points. I'm approaching this from a trad bow approach.

Straight feathers parallel ( no offset) can work.
Staight feathers with offset to the shaft can work. Left or right.
Helical (left or right) can work.
Short (2-3" ) or long (5+ ") feather fetching can work.
Three of four feather fetching can work.

Again, depends on how your arrow is tuned to your bow.
Or, another way to look at it, the more feathers, the more length, the more offset or helical curve you NEED for good arrow flight, you probably have an arrow that isn't tuned well enough for that bow.

3 feathers, 4" long, with moderate straight offset or helical, should aid most arrows to fly well enough.

Watch this video. The archer is a "pretty good shot.". He is Col. Jimmy Blackmon (US Army, former Commanding Officer of the 101st Airborne Air Assault, IBO trad archery 3d World Champion, US National 3d trad Champion).
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JOklaPN44TM

Another good video by "Greg", of "archery 101"
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yVTEJ6xO21s

I normally just fletch an arrow up and paper tune on the patio.
Short distance, and always gives proper reading. Can do at 1 am too (after I get off work).

Have gone back and bare shaft double checked at longer. Same results.

Think the problem comes from folks trying to tune a bow and build an arrow at the same time.

This chit aint that hard.

Running 3 fletch 4" heiical may cost me some speed, but it's boringly good and repeatable.
180-280 FPS

All my arrow build testing is done w FP.
Have NEVER shot a bare shaft w BH on it.

And nope, not even curious.

Think most tuning "how to's" say NOT to try a BH w bare shaft.

Have only had one bow (recurve) that was out of the ordinary on arrow (req'd substantially stiffer than thought).
Out of around 35. Compounds have been pretty easy, except for the Oneidas, that also req'd a stiffer spine.

There I wonder if string over travel the culprit.
New model w string stops might be neat to test.

I know a lot of folks like to tinker.
And there can be an advantage to doing that, if competing.
But most folks just muddy the waters, think they know more than they do.

Set and forget aint a bad thing.
Why I run everything helical.

One less thing to screw up.
And one size and brand of fletch is kinda convenient too.
Only need one jig and it stays in one config.

The older I get the less I can tolerate hassles

Got a bud that always fuggs with his bow, always.
He's won the IBO, dunno if he still shoots for a brand.
I wonder how many times he's screwed up, always tinkering.

LOL

When I bow hunted I shot traditional off the shelf. I fletched feathers helical.
I tried straight. Broadheads fly better for me with the shaft spinning. Field points do ok straight fletched.